Abstract

During 1910s–1940s, Indian intellectuals developed physical anthropology as a modern nationalist discipline for the subcontinent. Through their contributions, they sought to construct themselves as disciplinary experts. To legitimize their expertise, even while they remained colonized subjects, Indian anthropologists foregrounded their research as more scientific than that of the colonial administrators. This claim of being better equipped to study the subcontinent’s anthropological diversity was based on the Indian anthropologists’ purported familiarity with the region’s culture and history. This essay shows how their sociohistorical position helped them claim scientific expertise and yet also obscured other imaginations of community identities. Indian researchers insisted on keeping ethnicity and race separate. However, their choice of which communities to study and who to analyze racially reveals how ethnicity and race came to be co-constituted. Identities based on caste, regions, languages, and religion came to be ascribed with racial-biological meaning, often reinforcing existing social hierarchies.